A Ruined World
by Antoniusan
Summary: The world as we know it is gone. A research project under Dr. D has caused untold damage to avery nation worldwide. Kim struggles to accept what she has to do to survive, meanwhile, certain characters from before start looking for her for varying reasons.


'Now what?' She thought, glancing at her watch.  
It was early on in the morning, but her clock wasn't the thing to tell her, it was broken, a crack running through the glass and clockwork, a hair from breaking through the bottom of the clock.  
She really should get a new one, but it held certain sentimental value to her.  
A friend, who now was missing, probably dead, had given it to her when they were younger.

He had given it to her after finding it in a bag of chips they shared in a tree house.

Ronald had given it to her in a better world.

She sighed and took the clock from her wrist, swinging her backpack from her right shoulder after grasping the broken watch firmly in her left hand.

She looked at the deep gash in the clock, shaking her head while thinking of her luck a few days before. A knife had gone into the clock, ruining it but saving her arm from being damaged.

She let it fall into a small pocket on the side, closed it tightly and made sure it wouldn't fall out or get wet in the rain outside.

Kim hoisted the backpack up on her back, tightened all straps around her torso and made sure all her stuff was in her belt and pockets.  
She made sure her leather jacket was closed tightly and her boots were tight to her ankle.

She sighed again and looked outside. It was still raining, but she had spent so much time looking at the watch that the sun was rising in the horizon, and soon enough people were going to pass through here.

Bad people.

Kim patted the weapon on her back and the hair dryer at her hip for comfort; she walked out into a deserted world.

A ruined world was all there was left.

* * *

And Shego yawned.

She seemed to do it a lot these days, there just wasn't much left to do with her spare time.

Go online? No servers anymore.

Watch TV? No people still broadcasting, last emergency broadcasts were cut months ago.

Radio? Same there, buddy.

Newspapers? Are you daft?

Shego groaned and swung her feet down from the desk she had been using as a footrest and glanced around the dingy hole she had lived in the past few days.

There wasn't much left in the old lair for her to use, she had been a bit deep and philosophical when she had found her old nail file in the rubble that used to be her room in this country.

Being a wanted felon in a whole lot of countries was good for a few things, mostly having hideouts from Moscow to Hawaii and a few countries in between and around.

But still no Drakken…

Shego kicked a footlocker in frustration. Why was it that as soon as you wanted something annoying it was gone only then? Whenever she was working, he hung all over her, blabbing about how he could do it better or what world he was going to conquer. Now, on the other side of the looking glass, he was gone. Vanished from the face of the Earth... and Shego hated it. She never thought isolation could suck, as she was sickened by most morons she met on her few nights off her job, but after a few months with nothing but looking for Drakken to do, she actually missed her walking, blue punching bag...er...employer.

She especially missed the buffoon and her Princess, Pumpkin, etcetera.

She missed the thrill of the fight and the hunt.

'Oh well…' She thought, 'could be worse…I could be under…'

"Attack!" An explosion rocked the building and she found herself thrown off her feet and into the footlocker she had kicked. She groaned and rubbed her sore shoulder, she glred the living crap out of the locker and melted it into a puddle with her plasma blast, vindictive as they were, both footlocker and human.

Shego glanced out the window and saw a score of men storming the front gates with a variety of weaponry.

This was a lousy day, but it was getting better, Shego mused as she threw herself out of the window and landed before the leader of the men.

* * *

Now what of Drakken, many might wonder, and many will keep wondering.

After the first year of warfare, after the big boom, Drakken was last seen snooping around outside a top secret facility in the Nevada desert and drawing some fire from the guards before running away.  
Those guards were among the last few thousands of U.S. marine soldiers, positioned to safeguard a bunker with hot reputation.

Years have passed since Drakken was last seen trying to breach that bunker, and years have passed since the internet failed, the TV stations went into emergency broadcast mode and people hid or died.

Months had passed since Ronald Stoppable, liberator of Japan, went into hiding with his partner Rufus. Weeks since the raid of his hideout and his presumed death.

Weeks passed since Kim Possible, hope for many, went under the radar and disappeared. She would appear for a few days in one continent, then reappear a week later on the other side of the globe.

Rumors said that Wade Load, helper of hope and liberty, was still alive in an underground facility, hoping to stop the most dangerous threat to humankind.

Wade was rumored to work with Dr. Drakken in a top secret research base in the Arctic to stop one of Drakken's inventions.

Rumors were all that flew safely in the air, facts were the stuff of yesterday and hope was the stuff of legends.

The world was dying, and everything living with it.

Wherever Drakken was, he mourned his foolish past, and he regretted ever creating them; "The Fellers", "The Plagues", The Bebes.

* * *

Most people agree with me when I say that all stories should be told from the beginning.

When telling a story like it should be told, all facts are revealed, the clues are in the open and you know where you stand.

War is the perfect opposite of a well told story, filled with chaos and hidden clues. Not one man knows exactly where he stands and the facts are scrambled and thrown into the fire to roast with all the millions of lives lost in all wars of time.

Now one might ask themselves what this tale is.

Is it a story or a war?

The answer is not obvious, and it will not show itself until after this is settled. So in a way, the answer is the question that is being asked when confronted with the answer.

The wording is scrambled, the meaning unclear, and this means my words are at war, but in my mind, the pieces align themselves and the clues shine with a bright light in the darkness.

My mouth is a war but my mind is a story.

And is not that what we all should ask ourselves in the answer of the question? What parts of us are at war, and what parts are only stories being told by someone behind the curtains.

This is confusing enough to let you in on a secret.

The big boom mentioned earlier was no boom, nor was it big.

It was subtle, and as easily missed as a breeze inside a gust of wind a day in early fall.

But it swept with it all the peace and quiet nonetheless...

Now, we must move on to the protagonists, antagonists and other agonists of this…story? …war?

* * *

Kim was walking.

She felt like that was all she did these days.

And actually it was, she had been walking from Europe to the east for months now. Kim Possible was walking to China, and from there she was getting to Japan somehow.

She felt pretty stupid, but with all the commercial traveling down and the roads blocked all over the parts of the world she was in, the only thing left was to walk.

She didn't even have anything to do while walking for days on end, she had no one to talk to, no book to read, her musicplayer had been lost and animals were rare to even hear these days.

Kim looked around and saw mountains and some clouds, murky and black from the smog of war and factories. Houses lay in the distance and Kim began the massive detour that would cost her several days' worth of travel, but cut down on the risks of being spotted.

She began muttering under her breath about the unfairness of it all, a hot topic for every survivor these days, and the wish for a vehicle.

Kimberly Anne Possible was the girl, who could do allegedly anything, and was stupid enough to put her motto to the test by hiking by foot only to Japan from Europe.

In fact, the only way China and Japan had become East Asia in her mind was because Japan was one big-ass island. Europe was a bunch of countries with featureless borders on paper, hence the elimination of borders when the police stopped caring about your passport and instead began to run.

Kim had been on the road for about six months give or take a dozen of days, and she estimated to be in Japan within the next three or so. Everything depended on if she could find a ship that worked or was salvageable.

It was a lot of maybe-s on the way, and even more when she got there, but rumor had it Ron had been spotted there a year ago in his old school, the Yamanouchi ninja school, and Kim had some catching up to do.

So she kept on walking.

And walking.

And walking…Shego wanted to scream in rage. The buffoons she had to defeat had cost her a great hideout, and now she had to find another one. Luckily enough, Drakken always had enough hideouts they were never more than a few days walking apart.

A few days walking were hellish in the wastelands of middle Europe, as the land was burnt bare and the air rancid under the sweltering summer sun.

She cursed the name Drakken and all of his ancestors, not even trying to mask her suspicions of them not being entirely human.

Walking was common for both of these females as they made their ways across the marred face of the planet, and only feeble plans and hopes kept them up until the ends of their eventless journeys.

Little did they know that their paths would cross, but not before Kim had received grim news.

Kim had found a boat that was somewhat seaworthy and gave her guardian angel a run for her money on the ocean before landing safely on the western shore of the southernmost island of Japan.

Shego had found another hideout in slightly better conditions than the last one and settled there for the time being and just waited life out a few months.

A few months were all that was needed.

* * *

In a bunker, 15 levels below ground level, two enemies made allies made constant research on a multitude of subjects, with the help of various apprentices and friends, and a major breakthrough was made two weeks after Kim Possible's arrival to Japan and two and a half months after Shego's arrival at the old Drakken hideout.

In the darkness of a desolate bunker, a monitor blinked blue once and then went back to sleep as it had for the last year.

In the bright burning midday sun on the other side of the globe an old army radio hissed in static and then relayed a few parts of words in French for a few seconds before resuming its' silence under a heap of rubble.

At dusk a small handheld device deep down in a redheaded girls' backpack beeped once before going silent again.

At dawn an old rusty intercom central cycled every diode on and off once before shutting off once again.

It was only for a few seconds, but for the first time in three years, hope began to shake the rubble off its' back.

For the first time in three years, a signal had broken through the jamming devices of the Bebe armies.

For the first time in three years, a redheaded girl screamed and cried as she hugged a small blue device closely to her chest, weeping over friends and family as old memories resurfaced.

And for the first time in two and a half years, a green-skinned girl promised to herself that she would break into a high-security facility for some high-level loot.

Shego was going to find Drakken, and that needed some good stuff.

The search was on for real this time, she would loot the world until she had what she needed to get what she wanted; Drakken's blue ass at the end of her boot.


End file.
